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THE SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC. 



SPEECH 



OF 



HON. RICHARD F. PETTIGREW, 

OF 1 SOUTH DAKOTA, 

f 

1 I ( 

IN THE 

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1900. 



WASHINGTON, 
I900. 



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C org-. Record Ot£j 

10 Ja. ' ui. 



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The South African Republic 
SPEECH 

OF / 

HON. RICHARD F. PETTIGREW. 



[Prom tlio Congressional Record of April 11, 1900.] 

Mr. PETTIGREW. I ask that my resolution may be read. 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair lays the resolution 
before the Senate. 

The Secretary read the resolution submitted by Mr. Pettigrew 
February 2, 1900, as follows: 

Whereas from the hour of achieving their own independence the people of 
the United States have regarded with sympathy the struggles of other peo- 
ple to free themselves from European domination: Therefore, 

Resolved. That we watch with deep and abiding interest the heroic battle 
of the South African Republic against cruelty and oppression, and our best 
hopes go out for the full success of their determined contest for liberty. 

Mr. PETTIGREW. Mr. President, it is my opinion that the 
Senate should pass this resolution of sympathy for the people of 
South Africa. If we do not, it wjilbe the first time in our history 
as a Republic that we have failed to express our sympathy and in- 
terest, in emphatic terms, for any race or people whatever who 
were striving to maintain free institutions. 

We are parties to the agreement resulting from the conference 
at The Hague last year; and while I do not believe that America 
should take up the quarrels of other nations or become compli- 
cated in European controversies, it does not appear to me that the 
Administration has made an honest effort in good faith to comply 
with and cai'ry out the terms of The Hague agreement. For that 
agreement provided — 

Title Second.— Or friendly offices and mediation. 

Art. 2. In case of serious dissension or of conflict, before the appeal to 
arms, the signatory powers agree to have recourse, as far as circumstances 
will permit, to the friendly offices or to the mediation of one or of several 
friendly powers. 

Art 3. Independently of this resort, the signatory powers think it to be 
useful that one or more powers who have no part in the conflict may offer of 
their own volition, so far as circumstances may make it appropriate, their 
friendly offices or their mediation to the states engaged in the conflict. The 
right to offer these friendly offices or mediation is absolute in the powers 
which take no part in the conflict even during hostilities. The exercise of 
this right shall never be considered by either of the parties to the contest as 
an unfriendly act. 

Art. 4. The duty of a mediator consists in conciliating the opposing claims 
and appeasing the resentment which may have sprung up between the states 
engaged in the conflict. 

Art. 5. The duties of a mediator cease from the moment when it is offi- 
cially declared by either party to the strife, or by the mediator himself, that 
the methods of conciliation proposed by him are not accepted. 

I can not learn that we have proposed any method of concilia- 

4303 3 



tion. It is reported that, in a perfunctory way, our Government 
asked Great Britain if it could do anything to settle the quarrel. 
Our plain duty was to have acted before the first gun was fired, 
and then, if refused, to have at once expressed our disapproval of 
England's course by passing resolutions of sympathy for the South 
Africa Republics. 

UNCLE SAM CODDLES JOHN BULL. 

Instead of taking the most American course our Administra- 
tion has allowed the world to believe we are in full sympathy with 
Great Britain. Even if there is not a verbal understanding be- 
tween Mr. Hay, our Secretary of State, and the English Govern- 
ment, approved by the President, it is evident that as long as Mr. 
McKinley is in power England will have at least the moral sup- 
port of the United States in whatsoever she may do. I believe 
that there is such an understanding, for in no other way can I 
explain the course and conduct of the President. 

There is strong corroboration of this view in the visit of the 
Senator from Ohio, Mr. Hanna, to England last year, and his great 
admiration for the English Government, expressed on his return. 

The struggle going on in South Africa is between the same 
despotic power, intensified a hundredfold, that over a century ago 
endeavored to destroy liberty on the American continent and a 
republic weaker in numbers than we were when we made our 
triumphant resistance to British tyranny. 

"Who can say that the Boers are not prompted by as lofty a 
patriotism, by as ardent a desire for freedom, as inspired our fore- 
fathers in that Revolution which, in 1776, brought our own Re- 
public into being as a model after which the liberty of the world 
has been fashioned. 

Under the conditions and circumstances grouped aboutthe origin 
of our Government and the historical events attending its course 
of development, the most unnatural alliance for us to make is an 
English alliance. Our most natural alliance would be one of 
sympathy with the heroic defenders of the Transvaal, who have 
been winning victories that take their places beside Marathon, 
Bunker Hill, and Lexington. 

And in response, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a wave of en- 
thusiasm moves across our continent, and in public meetings the 
hope everywhere finds expression that the Republic of South 
Africa shall not perish from the earth, and that the red uplifted 
hand of British greed may be stayed. 

Why, then, did not our Executive take action in behalf of lib- 
erty and humanity, action that would have convinced the world 
that we still believed liberty and humanit}' should prompt nations 
in their dealings with each other? Simply because he is engaged 
in the same wretched business as that which is drenching the 
soil of Africa with the blood of martyrs. He is busy with an 
effort to rob the people of the Philippine Islands, and is slaugh- 
tering those who resist robbery because, forsooth, it will pay, 
because they are rich and are worth robbing, and because their 
island possessions will furnish a foothold for other robberies. 
The Executive has the power to intercede in behalf of the South 
African Republic, and if he had spoken as Cleveland spoke in the 
Venezuela case, there would have been no war in South Africa. 
But the President will not avail himself of the humane oppor- 
tunity. The duty is then upon us to act. 

4363 



OF OUR OWN RACE. 

Who are these people that excite our sympathy? 

They are of our own race. The same blood courses in their 
veins and in our veins. They sprang from the Dutch, who drove 
Phillip out of Holland, and from the French Huguenots, who fled 
to Holland rather than surrender their convictions. Their cai-eer 
in South Africa is a living, burning page in the history of the 
world, and the impress of their earnestness comes down to the 
children of the thirteen colonies through the adoption of the alter- 
native so eloquently voiced by the patriot Virginian, " Give me 
liberiy or give me death." 

I hope to enjoy the day when England shall have been driven 
from every foot of the soil of Africa and a republic of united and 
happily governed states constructed on the ruins of her despotic 
power. England has conquered no people but to rob them, has 
governed no race but to blight it with the curse of her presence. 
The Boers know her methods and their results better than any 
people in the world. Sixty -five years ago they left their homes in 
Cape Colony and fled into the wilderness, preferring to wander 
in the desert and fight for an existence against the savage tribes 
of that region than accept the pretended protection of a nation of 
canting hypocrites. 

The South African Republic and the Orange Free State are in 
the interior of South Africa, and neither of these Republics touches 
the coast at any point. The South African Republic is separated 
from the Indian Ocean by a long, narrow strip of coast land, from 
30 to 60 miles in width, owned by Portugal. The chief seaport is 
Lourenco Marquez, on Delagoa Bay. Both of these Republics are 
dry, treeless, elevated plains, broken by mountain ranges, like 
Wyoming. They are naturally too dry for successful cultivation, 
but are covei'ed with the rich grasses of semiarid growth. Farm- 
ing is carried on through irrigation. Small patches of ground 
along the low river bottoms produce crops without, irrigation , but 
their area is limited. Timber is scarce and is found only upon 
land contiguous to the streams. The principal industry is raising 
cattle, and the population is scattered over wide areas in isolated 
communities. 

The area of the South African Republic (or the Transvaal) is 
119,139 square miles. 

Its population in 1898 was 336,400 whites— 137,900 men and 
107,450 women and 101,000 children — with a black population of 
748,750 persons. Pretoria, the capital, has a population of 10,000. 

Johannesburg, which is the gold- mining center, has a population 
of 108,063 people— 79,500 men and 28,763 women; the whites, 60,000; 
Chinese, 4,800; black, 42,500. In the Transvaal there are 10,000 
Jews. The rest of the population are Protestants, mostly Dutch 
Reform and Lutheran. The Republic owns the railroads and tele- 
graph lines. The total revenue is over twenty millions ; but this 
includes railroads, telegraph, postal receipts, and the sale of explo- 
sives. 

THE BOER GOVERNMENT. 

The government is a republic. 

The legislature consists of two houses of 27 members each. 

No person can be a member of either house unless he is 30 
years of age and possessed of fixed property. The term of service 
is four years. 

The first chamber is elected by the first-class burghers. 
4363 



6 

The first-class burghers are white male persons residing in the 
republic prior to 1876, or those who fought in the wars of the 
republic, including the Jameson raid, and the children of such 
persons over 16 years of age. 

The second chamber of the legislature is elected by the first 
and second class burghers. 

Second-class burghers are naturalized citizens and their chil- 
dren over 16 years of age. 

Naturalization may be obtained after two years' residence by 
taking the oath of allegiance and paying $10. 

Naturalized burghers may become first-class burghers after 
twelve years. 

Sons of naturalized burghers may become naturalized burghers 
at 18 years of age. 

First-class bui'ghers ten years thereafter. 

The president and commanding general are elected by the first- 
class burghers only. 

The executive authority is vested in a president, elected for five 
years, assisted by a council of four members. 

The Orange Free State is south of the Transvaal, and has an 
area of 48,300 square miles, and in 1890 had a population of 77,700 
whites and 130,000 blacks or natives. 

The capital is Bloeinfontein, with a population of 2,077 whites 
and 1,300 blacks. 

The railroads and telegraph lines are owned by the government. 

Exclusive of the railroads the revenues in 1897 was $2, 010, 000, 
and the expenses .$1,905,000. 

Government. — Written constitution. President elected for five 
years by voters. Executive council consists of the secretary and 
four others. 

Legislature. — Popular assembly; 60 members, elected by popu- 
lar vote for four years, one-half every two years; salary, $10 per 
day; qualification, burghers 25 years old, owner of real estate val- 
ued at $2,500. Voters, white burghers, by birth or naturalization, 
who own real property worth $750 or pay a rent of $180 per annum 
or a yearly income of not less than $1 ,000 or own personal property 
worth $1,500. 

Law. — Roman Dutch. Supreme court, composed of three 
judges. Circuit courts. 

Religion.— Dutch Reform, 68,940; English Episcopal, 1,353; 
Methodist, 753; Lutheran, 312; Roman Catholic, 416: Jews, 113. 

Education , free, compulsory, and universal. Two daily and two 
weekly papers. 

SMALL IS NUMBERS, BUT GBEAT IN BATTLE. 

Every man over 16 years of age or under 60 is enr-olled in the 
militia and trained to handle arms, but the standing army is very 
small, consisting of a few trained artillerymen. The total white 
population of these two Republics is less than 500,000, and they 
are to-day holding in check and have repeatedly defeated the 
greatest army England ev6r sent from her shores. Their army 
has no doubt received many recruits from Cape Colony. 

Cape Colony is a British colony, and embraces the southern 
coast of Africa, possessing an area of 191,400 square miles, with a 
population of 956,000 people in 1891. Of these 336,900 are Euro- 
pean, three-fourths of the white population Dutch, and those who 
first occupied Cape Colony were the ancestors of the Boers of the 
two Republics now at war with Great Britain. 
43S3 



Cape Colony was settled by the Dutch in 1652, when a number 
of Hollan 1 farmers were landed at Table Bay, now Cape Town, 
for the purpose of raising vegetables and cattle to supply the 
Dutch vessels engaged in trade with India, Java, and Borneo. 
This trade was very profitable and the settlement prospered. The 
vessels of all nations trading with the East put in here to secure 
fresh supplies, and thus the farmers found a good market for all 
their crops. Families arrived each year from Holland, and the 
settlement spread along the coast and into the interior and en- 
gaged in all kinds of agriculture and stock raising. They made 
slaves and servants of members of the native tribes of blacks, 
compelling them to cease their wandering habit and establish 
themselves in permanent settlements. 

In 1795 England, being at war with Holland, sent a fleet and an 
army to South Africa and captured Cape Town and garrisoned it. 
England held the colony until 1803, and then surrendered it to the 
Batavian Republic; but in 1806, the Batavian Republic having 
been conquered by Napoleon and erected into the Kingdom of 
Holland, with Louis Bonaparte upon the throne, England sent a 
fleet of ships and an army of soldiers and again captured Cape 
Town and resumed the government of the country. 

In 1814, when Holland again became independent and the mon- 
archy was restored, England refused to surrender Cape Colony, 
but annexed it to the British Empire and paid Holland $30,000,000 
for a quitclaim title to the colony. 

BRITISH CONTEMPT FOR THE DUTCH. 

England despised the Dutch and her officers treated them with 
contempt, and under her domineering rule the people were op- 
pressed. 

All semblance of a republican form of government was abolished. 

Civil offices were filled from England with broken members of 
Parliament, with bad, if any, character. 

Adventurers, worthless sons of distinguished men, were commis- 
sioned to rule the colonists, and places were even bartered away 
for money. 

The English language was made the official language, and no 
man could serve on a jury unless he could speak English. In the 
country the people were not able to employ the English language. 
All trials, therefore, had to be conducted in Cape Town; and men 
charged with offenses were taken long distances from their homes 
and tried by a jury of foreigners, whose language the victims of 
so-called justice could not understand. 

The vagrant laws were repealed, and the consequence was that 
the country swarmed with Hottentots, who begged from and 
robbed the settlers and became worthless, diseased tramps. They 
were rapidly becoming extinct under this loose system, although 
while the strict Dutch rules were in vogue these natives had been 
giving promise of rapid civilization. 

The Dutch have demonstrated superior ability in civilizing in- 
ferior races and seldom go to war with them, while the English 
have developed no capacity in that direction. Where the contact 
is close and constant, English rule has resulted in ceaseless con- 
flict, wearisome war, and the final extinction of the inferior race 
by the sword and by disease. 

Finally England freed the slaves of the colonists under a propo- 
sition to pay about half their value to their owners. Payment for 
the slaves was to be made in London, and so the Dutch farmers 

4363 



8 

found themselves the victims of claim agents, and, being under 
the disadvantage of inability to speak the language, many never 
presented their claims. Those who did were robbed by attorneys, 
agents, and middlemen, so that they realized only one-quarter of 
the value of the property. 

The Dutch, had they been accorded proper treatment, would 
have been contented and would have made loyal citizens. They 
would have united in marriage with English settlers who had be- 
gun to locate in the colony, for they were of the same family or 
race as the English. But England treated them as conquered 
subjects, as an inferior race, as people fit only to be trampled 
upon. Thus, after almost a century, she is reaping the fruits of 
tyranny in a war waged in self-defense by the descendants of those 
people who should and would have remained loyal under the benef- 
icent management of a humane government. 

A DECAYING EMPIRE. 

Great Britain is gathering the harvest of a policy that is testing 
the strength of the Empire and may accomplish its overthrow. 
One thing is certain: England's prestige is gone and the limit of 
her aggressive empire has been reached. Decay, rapid decay, will 
now set in. The reflex influence of a century of wrong practiced 
upon others has destroyed the manhood and the character of the 
people at home, and the ranks of her armies are no longer filled 
with the sturdy farmers of the days of Drake and Howard. 

In discussing the events that follow J. have drawn my informa- 
tion from British sources alone. 

South Africa, by George M. Theal, page 175: 

It is not a pleasant admission for an Englishman to make, but it is the 
truth, that it would be difficult to find in any part of the world a people with 
so much cause to be discontented as were the old inhabitants of Cape Colony 
for many years after the fall of the ministry of the Earl of Liverpool. 

Page 196, Theal gives the cause of the Dutch leaving Cape 
Colony: 

First. There was subjection by a foreign and unsympathetic government. 

Second. There was prohibition of their language in the public offices and 
the courts of law. 

Third. There was the superintendent of the London Missionary Society, 
their ablest and most relentless opjionent, in possession of boundless influ- 
ence with the British authorities. 

Fourth. There were the slanderous statements made by the philanthropic 
societies of England concerning them. 

Fifth. There was the sudden emancipation of their slaves without ade- 
quate compensation. 

Sixth. There was the whole mass of the colored people placed upon a po- 
litical footing with them, and that without a vagrant act being put in force. 

Seventh. There was no security for life or property in the eastern dis- 
tricts, which were exposed to invasion by the Kosas, as the secretary of 
state took part with the barbarians. 

These were the chief causes of the great emigration, and there were many 
others of less importance. 

Froude, Oceana (page 39), sides with the Boers and gives the 
same reason for their departure. 
Bryce, M. P., in North American Review, December, 1899: 

She [England] altered the system of courts and local government, reduc- 
ing the rights which the people had enjoyed. She insisted on the use of the 
English language to the exclusion of Dutch. In undertaking to protect the 
natives and the slaves whom the Dutch were accused by the English mission- 
aries of treating very harshly, that the missionaries sometimes maligned 
them and greatly resented the attention which was paid to the charges. Fi- 
nally she abolished slavery and allotted a very inadequate sum as compensa- 
tion to the South African slaveholders, much of which sum never reached 
their hands because it was made payable in London. 

4363 



9 

BOEHS FLED FROM BRITISH INJUSTICE. 

For these reasons, in 1836 thousands of the Dutch ahandoned 
their homes, took their cattle and personal property, made domi- 
ciles of their wagons, and started northward into the wilderness, 
fighting their way or making their peace with the savage tribes. 
They crossed the Orange River and then considered themselves 
beyond English dominion, for over and over again England had 
declared that she would not enlarge her possessions in South 
Africa. Here the settlers established a rude republic, and en- 
joyed the freedom implanted in their natures generations ago. 
To these descendants of the men who let the sea in upon Holland 
rather than submit to the hateful rule of the Duke of Alva, liberty 
was dearer than life. 

That portion of Africa to which these people had gone in search 
of a land where freedom might thrive without restraint was dry 
and fit only for grazing purposes. It lies in the high plains region 
at the head of the Orange River. Along theeast coastof southern 
Africa there is thrown a chain of high mountains parallel with 
the sea. 

Some of the migrating settlers crossed the mountains and found 
their eastern slopes plenteously clothed with rich vegetation. 
Near the coast semitropical plants grew in luxurious abundance. 
Rains gave the soil an adequate supply of moisture, and the 
streams plunged over great precipices down to the sea. At what 
is now Durban was found a fine harbor. Many of the emigrants 
followed the transmountain explorers and settled along the east 
slope, contiguous to the sea. Here, however, the Dutch home seek- 
ers ran counter to England's scheme of benevolence toward man- 
kind (for we of the United States are not the originators of gov- 
ernmental desire to make all people happy) , and the sturdy wan- 
derers were forced by British bayonets to recross the mountain 
chain and occupy the inhospitable plateaus of the semiarid belt. 
The country about Durban, the colony of Natal, the coast line 
the Boers had hoped to make lodgment upon, was promptly an- 
nexed to the Empire of Great Britain, and England thanked God 
that the circumference of the sea was safe from the occupancy of 
any other power. 

The Boers, determined not to submit to British rule, went back 
over the mountains and located upon plains between the Orange 
River and the Vaal River, some of their number crossing the Vaal 
and settling in what is known as the Transvaal. England, how- 
ever, adhered to the dogma that "Once a British subject, always 
a British subject; " that by migrating to and subduing new land 
these sturdy farmers, fleeing from English oppression, were ex- 
tending the domain of the Crown, and so in 1846 England affirmed 
her title by arbitrarily annexing all the country between the 
Orange and the Vaal rivers, embracing what is now the Orange 
Free State. A war ensued. The Boers were defeated at Bloem- 
fontein by an army dispatched from Cape Town to enforce the 
merciless edict of an implacable sovereign. 

WHAT AN ENGLISH HISTORIAN SATS. 

Fronde (an Englishman) has truthfully written that England 
always hates those whom she has injured. But with the aid of 
the Boers beyond the Vaal the republic maintained the contest, 
with varying success, until 1852, when England made a treaty 
with the Boers by which she recognized the Dutch settlement be- 
yond the Vaal as a free and independent state. In 1854, by treaty, 
4363 



10 

England also recognized the independence of the Orange Free 
State. The treaty of 1852 was confirmed by the cabinet of Lord 
Derby, and the treaty of 1854 was confirmed by the cabinet of 
Lord Aberdeen. Thus both of the English political parties par- 
ticipated in the recognition of these two Republics as independent 
states. 

Following the treaty of 1852, peace reigned for seventeen years. 

In 1869 a dispute arose concerning the boundary between the 
Orange Free State and the native tribes. England interfered and 
after some fighting decided in favor of the Orange Free State, and 
a treaty was signed, called the treaty of Aliwal North, fixing the 
boundary of the Orange Free State so as to embrace all the terri- 
tory in which the South African (or Kimberley) diamond mines 
were located. 

Froude may tell the story of English duplicity and treachery. I 
read from pages 45 and 46 of his Oceana: 

The ink on the treaty of Aliwal North was scarcely dry when diamonds 
were discovered in large quantities in a district which we had ourselves 
treated as a part of the Orange territory before our first withdrawal, and 
which had ever since been administered by Orange Free State magistrates. 
There was a rush of diggers from all parts of the country. There was a gen- 
uine fear that the Boers would be unable to control the flock of vultures 
which was gathering over so rich a prey. There was a notion also that the 
finest diamond mine in the world ought not to be lost to the British Empire. 
It was discovered that the part of the country in which it lay was not a part 
of the Free State at all and that it belonged to a Griqua chief named Water- 
boer. The chief, in past times, had been an ally of the English. The Boers 
were accused of having robbed him. He appealed for help and in an evil 
hour we lent ourselves to an aggression for which there was no excuse. Lord 
Kimberly gave his name to the new settlement. 

The Dutch were expelled. They did not resist, but they yielded under 
protest to superior forces, and from that day no Boer in South Africa has been 
able to trust to English promise. The manner in which we acted or allowed 
our representatives to act was insolent in its cynicism. 

We had gone in as the champions of the oppressed Waterboer. We gave 
Waterboer and his Griquas a tenth of the territory. We kept the rest, and 
all that was valuable, for ourselves. What could the Dutch have done worso? 
We have accused them of breaking their engagement with us, and it was we 
who taught them the lesson. A treaty but a few months old was staring us 
in the face. Even if Waterboer"s title had been as good as his friends pre- 
tended, we had pledged ourselves to meddle no more in such matters, in lan- 
guage as plain as words could make it. 

Our conduct would have been less entirely intolerable if we had rested 
simply on superior strength— if we had told the Boers simply that we must 
have the diamond fields and intended to take them; but we poisoned the 
wound and we justified our action by posing before the world as the protectors 
of the rights of native tribes whom we accuse them of having wronged. 

And we maintained this attitude through the controversy which after- 
wards arose. I had myself inquired subsequently into the details of this 
transaction, perhaps the most discreditable in the annals of English history. 

A SAMPLE OF BRITISH HONOR. 

Theal (an English writer) , South Africa, page 325, finishes the 
story in the following language: 

President Brand, of the Free State, then went to England and laid the case 
before the imperial authorities. In brief it was this: That Great Britain had 
taken the land from the Free State under pretense that it belonged to Water- 
boer, and that a British court after a careful examination had decided that 
Waterboer had no right to it. The reply which Brand received was to the 
effect that it was a necessity for the paramount power in South Africa to 
be in possession of the diamond mines, but he would receive 8450,000 for 
Griqualand West, which contained the diamond fields, as a solution. This 
sum President Brand accepted. There was no other way. 

English honor went for naught. The Boers had long since 
found that out, and hatred of England and of Englishmen had be- 
come an inherited trait of Boer character. 

The country beyond the Vaal was loosely governed. The Boers 
did not like to pay taxes, so each community would meet occa- 
sionally in mass meeting and make their own laws, being better 
4333 



11 

satisfied with the home product than with the kind sent them 
from the charnei house of corruption across the seas. 

The blacks outnumbered the whites and the disparity in num- 
bers emboldened the natives. Conflicts between roving bands and 
the settlers were a result of this condition. The situation fur- 
nished the excuse, and in 1877 England marched an armed force 
into the Transvaal and declared that it was annexed to the British 
Crown as a colony, under the pretext of establishing a stable gov- 
ernment for the protection of life and property. 

The Boers did not at first resist this usurpation of government 
and seizure of territory. They were scattered over wide areas, 
were poor, and it was not easy to mobilize for defense. In order 
to avert any tendency toward resistance, the robber government 
promised the Boers a system of local self-government. It hap- 
pened, as usual, that the English officials failed to keep their 
promises, and they became arrogant, insolent, and offensive in the 
collection of taxes. This condition, forced upon the Boers, con- 
tinued until 1880, when they revolted, made prisoners of the 
English garrison, occupied the passes leading to Natal and in three 
engagements defeated their oppressors, killing over three hundred 
and wounding as many more. The loss of the farmer warriors in 
these encounters was 17 killed and 28 wounded, 

THE BATTLE OP MAJUBA HILL. 

Following these bloody events came the famous and historic 
battle of Majuba Hill. During the darkness of the night of Febru- 
ary 26, 1881, a force of 600 British troops occupied a high hill which 
commanded the Boer position. With the dawn of the succeeding 
day the Boer commander, General Joubert, discovered the pres- 
ence of England's fighting force on the crest high above him. It 
was an advantage that must be overcome, as its retention involved 
grave consequences to the cause for which General Joubert had 
armed his followers. The emergency demanded prompt action 
and the general called for volunteers to storm the height. In re- 
sponse 150 intrepid Dutchmen stepped forward and offered them- 
selves as a forlorn hope to scale the hill and drive the British 
away. They were placed under command of Nicholas Smit, 
After several hours of laborious ascent, Smit reached the top of 
the elevation at noon with about 80 of his followers. In the face 
of this heroic success the enemy gave way to panic and fled, suf- 
fering the loss of 92 killed, 134 wounded, and 59 prisoners. It was 
the charge of the old 600 reversed. Theirs not to question why; 
theirs but to run or die. And they went, leaving among the slain 
the body of their commander, General Colley. The loss to the 
Boers was 1 killed and 5 wounded in this sanguinary affair, 
English historians who belong to the ruling oligarchy of Great 
Britain say that they were defeated at Majuba Hill by an over- 
whelming force of Boers, but they give no figures. 

The paternal home Government now hurried reenf orcements to 
Africa to wipe out the disgrace of Majuba Hill, but up to date 
the account has not been squared, unless the surrender of Cronje, 
with his 3,000 men, to Lord Roberts's army of 78,000, after killing 
and wounding more English than he had men in his command 
and holding the British army at bay for months, can be considered 
as squaring the account. 

Gen. Sir Evelyn Wood was in command of the new levy of 

12,000 men who took the field against the Boers. It appears, 

however, that he deemed discretion the better part of valor, for 

on the 5th of March an armistice was concluded between Sir 

4363 



12 

Wood and the farmer triumvirate, Paul Kruger, M. W. Preforms, 
and Peter Joubert, and this was soon followed by peace, with in- 
dependence restored to the South African Republic. 

The terms agreed upon included a provision recognizing Eng- 
land's suzerainty and the right of that Government to regulate 
the foreign affairs of the Transvaal, so that no treaty could be 
made with any foreign state (excepting only the Orange Free 
State) without England's consent. 

THE CURSE OF GOLD. 

Having thus recovered their internal independence, the Boers 
began immediately to plan for complete sovereignty, involving 
an abandonment of English suzerainty over them, and in 1884, as 
a result of their efforts, a new convention was signed by Lord 
Derby on the part of England, by which the South African Re- 
public was granted full recognition. The British resident was 
withdrawn from Pretoria and a council appointed. In 1885 a 
new element of discord escaped from the Pandora box of Boer 
destiny. Gold was discovered. The richest and most remark- 
able mines in the world were exposed to British cupidity. They 
were apparently inexhaustible, yielding an even average of gold 
to each and every ton of ore. As a result of this discovery immi- 
gration poured into the Transvaal from all parts of the world. 
England, Russia, France, Germany, the UnitedStates, and Canada 
sent their quotas of fortune seekers, and many of them were mere 
adventurers. They invaded the Boer domain, not to found homes 
and transport their families thither, but to wrest wealth from the 
soil and send their gains to distant climes. 

The Boers soon realized that the newcomers, gathered from_ 
every quarter of the globe, would some day outnumber them, 
and, by the force of numbers, take control of their government 
and turn their country over to some foreign power. And thus 
their freedom, so long sought amid dangers and suffering, and for 
which they had sacrificed so much, would be taken away for- 
ever. There were two preventive courses, either of which they 
had a perfect right to adopt. One was to forbid the opening of 
more mines, and the other was to limit the franchise and extend 
the time of residence required before an alien could secure citi- 
zenship. The latter course was pursued, and the length of resi- 
dence required to entitle an immigrant to citizenship was ex- 
tended to fourteen years. 

JAMESON LEARNED SOMETHING ABOUT THE BOERS AS 'WARRIORS. 

England was determined, in pursuance of her historic habit, to 
possess herself of the Transvaal gold fields. Cecil Rhodes, the 
president of the South African Chartered Company, and at that 
time prime minister of Cape Colony, who had made many mil- 
lions out of diamond mines at Kimberley, devised a plan for the 
consummation of England's scheme of greed. His plan involved 
a rebellion on the part of the English residents of Johannesburg 
and the overthrow of the Dutch government. In pursuance of 
this plan arms were secreted in the city. Dr. Jameson, adminis- 
trator of the territories of the South African Company, who had 
at his disposal a body of mounted police, was brought into the 
conspiracy and a day fixed for an uprising. On that day Dr. 
Jameson was to march in with his raiders and assist in accom- 
plishing the overthrow of the Dutch Republic. For some reason 
the Uitlanders changed the date of the demonstration; but Dr. 
Jameson, impatient over the delay and believing that his allies in 
4363 



13 

Johannesburg would fly to arms on the appearance of his force, 
determined to spring the plot. So, late in December, 1895, with 
a force of about 800 men, he entered the Transvaal and advanced 
toward Johannesburg. 

The Boers had been warned, and Jameson was soon surrounded 
and compelled to surrender. 

Jameson's force consisted of 512 well-mounted men and a strong 
quota of artillery, including 8 Maxim guns. The Boers had not 
over 700 men, and only 50 were at any time actually engaged. 
The last charge of the English was met and overcome by 7 Boers. 
Jameson lost 50 men and the Boers 4. On every previous occasion 
and on each subsequent occasion the British have failed utterly to 
prevail over the untrained citizen-soldiers of the Dutch Republic. 

It is believed, and I believe, that the British foreign office had 
full knowledge of the contemplated raid and approved it. The 
affair exhibited all the marks of identification of the time- honored 
English method as described by Morley, a method that provokes 
resistance and then assumes that the Queen's forces have been 
attacked. But in this case the overthrow of Dr. Jameson was so 
sudden and so complete, aud his operation so barefaced, infamous, 
and unjust, that even the English Government did not dare de- 
fend the raid or follow it up, although no one was punished for 
participating in it. 

DETERMINED TO RESIST BRITISH AGGRESSION. 

Jameson's revolutionary act caused great indignation among the 
Dutch of all South Africa and unified them in a determination to 
resist English aggression. It convinced the most conservative 
among the inhabitants that there was no limit to English perfidy 
and English dishonor. The Boers began at once to arm themselves 
and to fortify and to organize and drill all men between 16 and 60 
years of age. Pretoria was fortified and works were constructed 
to command Johannesburg. Guns and ammunition were bought 
in Europe, and the miners were taxed to pay for these weapons of 
war. A treaty was made with the Orange Free State, offensive 
and defensive. 

Members of the English Parliament have said recently that 
Kruger began his armament before the Jameson raid, with a view 
to -driving the English out of South Africa entirely. 

Mr. Drage, M. P., at Derby, December 7, 1899, said: 

I charge conspiracy among tho Dutch to overthrow English rule in South 
Africa. The armaments which have heen accumulated for many years past, 
even before the Jameson raid, and the efficient drill and equipment of the 
Boers, alone showed what their ambitions have been. 

The Boers have for nearly eighteen years been accumulating artillery, 
rifles, melinite, German and Hollander officers with which to oust England 
from South Africa. 

This statement is untrue, but it illustrates the English method 
of falsehood to justify crime. 

In 1895, just before the Jameson raid, Cecil Rhodes sent Major 
White to Pretoria to see what arms Kruger had, in order to judge 
what force to send to make the raid successful. 

White's diary was afterwards found with a memorandum of the 
guns he found at Pretoria. 

1. One-half dozen very old pieces of ordnance. 

2. One bronze gun of the date of the Second Empire. 

3. A broken Maxim Nordenfelt. 

4. A small muzzle-loader in bad condition. 
Three Maxims and six other guns. 

He says: 

None of the guns I saw were fit for much work. 
43G3 



14 

Captain Young visited Pretoria for the Times early in 1896, just 
after the Jameson raid, and he reports: 

Orders for batteries of field guns, quick-firing guns, and Maxims, and for 
sufficient rifles to arm every Dutchman in South Africa were being sent to 
Europe; Europeau drill inspectors were being imported and forts were be- 
ing constructed around Pretoria on the most improved designs. Cne attempt 
had been made to take their country from them; they were thoroughly con- 
vinced that the attempt would be renewed at some future date, so the Boers 
were determined to be thoroughly on their guard the second time. 

For 1892 themilitary expenditures of the Transvaal were §150,000, 
and for 1893 they were less than §100,000. In 1894 they were less 
than §150,000. In 1895. the year of the raid — and there were ru- 
mors of the raid for weeks before it occurred — themilitary expend- 
itures were §435,000, and in 1896 the expenditures were §2,500,000. 

The St. James Gazette of the 29th of August, 1899, says that in 
September, 1895, President Kruger asked why the Chartered Com- 
pany was buying hundreds of horses for presentation to the new 
Volunteer Rhodesian Horse. 

THE BOERS ARMED FOR DEFENSE. 

The truth is that the Boers armed only for defense, and after 
the Jameson raid, and they have continued to arm ever since. 
They had good reason to prepare for protection, for they saw Cham- 
berlain was still foreign secretary and had whitewashed Cecil 
Rhodes in Parliament, and England treated Jameson and his raid- 
ers as the heroes of the Empire. 

Proof is abundant that English spies have been engaged in map- 
ping all the roads, rivers, and defenses in both the Transvaal and 
tne Orange Free State for the past two years. In 1899 England de- 
termined to make another effort to secure the gold mines, for 
their richness had been further demonstrated by the production 
of over §80,000,000 in one year. 

To accomplish this covetous design excuses must be produced 
for a quarrel. The English papers began to publish daily edito- 
rials rehearsing alleged wrongs perpetrated upon her subjects in 
the Transvaal. It was said they were taxed without representa- 
tion, and a demand was made that the time required by the Dutch 
law to acquire the right to vote for members of both houses should 
be reduced to five years. 

These assertions were formulated by Chamberlain, the minister 
for the colonies, and presented by the British representative at 
Pretoria, and then the British Government, for the first time in its 
history, presented the curious spectacle of one government en- 
deavoring to compel another government to make it easy for her 
English citizens to renounce their allegiance to the Queen. 

After negotiations had continued for several months, the gov- 
ernment of the Transvaal surrendered to all the demands of the 
English, and sent the following communication to Mr. Chamber- 
lain, through the English representative at Pretoria, who said 
there was no doubt it would be accepted: 

Department of Foreign Affairs, Government Office, 

Pretoria, August IS, 1S09. 
Sir: With reference to your request for a joint inquiry, contained in your 
dispatches of August 2 and 3, the Government of the South African Republic 
have the honor to suggest the alternative proposal for the consideration of 
Her Majesty's Government, which this Government trusts may lead to final 
settlement. 

1. The Government are willing to recommend to the Volksraad and the 
people a five years' retrospective franchise, as proposed by his excellency 
the high commissioner at Bloemfontein on June 1, 18U9. 

2. The Government are further willing to recommend to the Volksraad 
43(53 



15 

that 8 new seats n the First Volksraad and, if necessary, also in the Sec- 
ond Volksraad be given to the population of the Witwatersrand, thus, with 
the 2 sitting members of the gold fields, giving to the population thereof 10 
representatives in a Raad of 3b, and in the future the representation of the 
gold fields of this Republic shall not fall below the proportion of one-fourth 
of the total. 

3. The new burghers shall, equally with the old burghers, be entitled to 
vote at the election for State President and commandant-general. 

i. The Government will always be prepared to take into consideration 
such friendly suggestions regarding the details of the franchise law as Her 
Majesty's Government, through the British agent, may wish to convey to it. 

5. In putting forward the above proposals the Government of the South 
African Republic assumes: 

(a) That Her British Majesty's Government will agree that the present 
intervention shall not form a precedent for future similar action, and that in 
the future no interference in the internal affairs of the Republic will take 
place. 

(b) That Her Majesty's Government will not further insist on the assertion 
of the suzerainty, the controversy on this subject being allowed tacitly to 
drop. 

(c) That arbitration (from which foreign element other than Orange Free 
State is to be excluded) will be conceded as soon as the franchise scheme has 
become law. 

The Government trusts that Her Majesty's Government will clearly un- 
derstand that in the opinion of this Government the existing franchise law 
of this Republic is both fair and liberal to the new population, and that the 
consideration which induces them to go further, as ttyey do in the above pro- 
posals, is their strong desire to get the controversies between the two Gov- 
ernments settled; and, further, to put an end to the present strained rela- 
tions between the two Governments and the incalculable harm and loss it 
has already occasioned in South Africa, and to prevent a racial war, from the 
effects of which South Africa may not recover for many generations, per- 
haps never at all. 

ENGLAND INCREASED UNREASONABLE DEMANDS. 

Mr. Chamberlain rejected the reasonable proposals, and, instead 
of coming to a fair understanding, he increased his demands. The 
Boers were disheartened and grieved. Consequently the South 
African Republic withdrew its proposals and asked Her Majesty's 
Government to stand by the original ones. 

Mr. Chamberlain replied by breaking off negotiations in the 
form of an ultimatum, saying: 

The Imperial Government are now compelled to consider the situation 
afresh and formulate proposals for a final settlement of the issues which have 
been created in South Africa by the policy constantly followed for many 
years by the Government of the South African Republic (the Transvaal). 

They will communicate the result of their deliberation in a later dispatch. 

It was then September 22. The promised proposals were not 
forthcoming. The efforts of Mr. Green, the consular agent in 
Pretoria, were in vain. In the meantime and previous to these 
negotiations war preparations were going on, and a cry for war 
was heard in the English Parliament. To gain time was the 
scheme for the present until the British Government had a suffi- 
cient army landed, so as to dictate terms. The Boers waited until 
October, and then sent an ultimatum demanding that no more 
troops be sent to Africa pending negotiations and offering to arbi- 
trate. 

Mr. Chamberlain now replied that the Dutch were not an inde- 
pendent nation and tbat they were in revolt against their sover- 
eign, the Queen of England. This was a position Mr. Chamber- 
lain could not sustain, for after the Jameson raid, when he was 
criticised in Parliament, on May 20, 189C, he made the following 
statement: 

In some quarters the idea is put forward that the Government ought to have 
issuedan ultimatum, which would have certainly been rejected and which must 
have led to war. Sir, I do not propose to discuss such a contingency as that. 
A war in South Africa would be one of the most serious wars that could pos- 
sibly be waged. It would be in the nature of a civil war. It would be a long 
4363 



16 

war, a bitter war, and a costly war. It would leave behind it the embers of 
a strife, which 1 believe generations would hardly be long enough to extin- 
guish. To go to war with President Kruger in order to force upon him re- 
forms in the internal affairs of his State, in which secretaries of state, stand- 
ing in this place, have repudiated all right of interference— that would be a 
course of action as immoral as it would have been unwise. 

SIMILAR TO THE PRESIDENT'S TALK. 

That declaration bears great similarity to the talk of our Presi- 
dent when he announced that forcible annexation would be crimi- 
nal aggression. 

It is very appropriate that, as we should be trying to destroy a 
republic in partnership with England, the President's own words 
and Chamberlain's own words are sufficient to expose the duplicity 
of both. 

In February, 1896, in a speech, Mr. Chamberlain made the fol- 
lowing statement: 

The answer wWch has hitherto been given, not on the part of the Trans- 
vaal, but on the part of some of its friends, was that to grant this request 
was to commit suicide, inasmuch as the moment the majority got the fran- 
chise the first use they would make of it would be to turn out the existing 
Government of the Transvaal and substitute a government of their own lik- 
ing. [Hearl Hear! and laughter.] I confess I thought there was some reason 
in that objection. It is difficult to attempt to persuade anyone so capable 
as President Kruger that it would be desirable that he should proceed to his 
own extinction, and accordingly I brought before him an alternative sug- 
gestion, which, at all events, would relieve him from that difficulty. The 
question is whether President Kruger will consider that that proposal will 
endanger the security of the Transvaal Government. If he doss, he will 
be perfectly justified in rejecting it. 

James Bryce, M. P., in the North American Review, December, 
1899, says: 

Under the convention of 1884, which fixed the relations of Britain and the 
South African Eepublic, the latter had the most complete control of its in- 
ternal affairs, and Britain possessed no more general right of interfering 
with those affairs than with the affairs of Belgium or Portugal. The suze- 
rainty which has been claimed for her, if it existed (for its existence under the 
convention of 1884 is disputed), related solely to the power of making treaties 
and did not touch any domestic matter. 

That which caused the war was the discussion of another matter alto- 
gether, which was admittedly not a grievance for the redress of which Britain 
had any right to interfere, and which therefore could not possibly amount to 
a casus belli. This matter was the length of time which should elapse before 
the new immigrants into the Transvaal could be admitted to citizenship, a 
matter entirely within the control of the Transvaal legislature. 

A PRICE THAT WOULD STAGGER HUMANITY. 

It is the story of the diamond mines over again, with this excep- 
tion: The Transvaal after the Jameson raid began to buy arms, 
and has become an arsenal of modern war equipment. Paul 
Kruger announced to the nations of the earth that, if they must 
surrender their liberties, England would pay a price in human 
life that would stagger humanity. 

But was there oppression in the Dutch Republic, of the Uit- 
landers or miners, as they are called? 

Thael says, on page 350 in his work on South Africa: 

The great majority of the people engaged in the mining industry are Eng- 
lish speaking, while the farming population is Dutch. The intercourse be- 
tween them is, upon the whole, friendly, and each section certainly exercises 
considerable influence upon the other. In the legislature, however, the Eng- 
lish-speaking section is almost powerless, and taxation is arranged so as to 
fall lightly upon agriculture. In other respects no one has anything to com- 
plain of. 

Andrew Carnegie, in the North American Review for Decem- 
ber, 1899, says: 

In the Transvaal there was scarcely any people but the Dutch until the 
discovery of the mines, which have attracted foreigners from all nations, 
4363 



17 

until to-day, by counting all foreigners as British, there may he a small ma- 
jority against the Dutch; but these are not all British. Some estimate that 
there are not more than 6,000 British among the miners. Those of all other 
nationalities do not side with the British as against the Dutch. The vast ma- 
jority of these, as well as of the British, are opposed to the present attack 
upon the Transvaal. Of this there can be no doubt. The people are work- 
ing the mines, receiving enormous wages and only wish to be let alone. 
They do not wish to become burghers in order to vote; especially is this true 
of the British. I have peculiar means of knowing this. Several of the ten- 
ants upon my Skibo estates have sons or brothers in the mines, ana I have 
from time to time been informed of the letters which they write home. 
There is one now in charge of an important mine whose letters are most sig- 
nificant. He stated to his father in one of these what I have already said, 
and that the Britons liked the Boers and did not wish to become burghers. 
They were there as Britons to make money and finally to return to their 
homes. They wanted no franchise. He stated that the petition to Her Maj- 
esty praying her to interfere was not generally signed by the Britons, and 
that many of the foreigners signed the petition believing it had reference to 
some dreaded temperance legislation in which they were deeply concerned. 

AMERICANS SYMPATHIZE WITH BOERS. 

H. A. Rose, formerly superintendent of the Homestake mine, in 
South Dakota, now engaged in mining in the Transvaal, writes a 
friend at Deadwood that the sympathies of most American min- 
ers there are with the Boers, and that many of them will fight in 
the ranks of the Dutch army. The miners are of the opinion that 
if the British conquer and get possession of the gold mines, which 
are the richest in the world, the miners' wages will at once be 
reduced. 

William Adan, who left Sioux Falls, which is my home, some 
years ago for South Africa, writes that he left Johannesburg just 
three days before hostilities between England and the Boers com- 
menced. He says that the war was uncalled for and that the 
so-called injustice of the Boer laws was greatly exaggerated by 
the British press. The Boers, he says, are a very temperate class 
of people, and the foreigner who behaved himself and acted like 
a man was respected by them and had no more trouble than in 
any other civilized community in the world. 

Froude thus describes the Boers in his book Oceana, on page 42: 

The Boer, as we call him, is a slow, good-humored person, not given to 
politics, occupied much with his religion and his private affairs. 

The Boers of South Africa, of all human beings now on this planet, corre- 
spond nearest to Horace's description of the Koman peasant soldiers who 
defeated Pyrrhus and Hannibal. There alone you will find obedience to 
parents as strict as among the ancient Sabines, the severa mater whose sons 
fetch and carry at her bidding, who, when those sons go to fight for their 
country, will hand their rifles to them and bid them return with their arms 
in their hands or else not return at all. 

They arrange their disputes with the natives with little fighting. 

In the Transvaal a million natives live peaceably in the midst of them, 
working with them and for them. There has been no uprising of the blacks 
against whites in the Transvaal. 

I have presented this evidence to show who the Boers are. Now, 
who are the Uitlanders? They all, or nearly all, live in Johannes- 
burg, which is a city of 108,000 people, 28.000 women and 80,000 
men. The whites number 60,000 and the blacks 43,000. There 
are 5,000 Chinese. Very few white women live in Johannesburg, 
and nearly all who are there are harlots. Chamberlain and the 
English Government pretend to the world that Great Britain was 
forced to go to war against the Boers to redress the wrongs of 
these unmarried men who are living there without family ties or 
social restraints, intending to remain only long enough to make 
their fortunes and then depart. These foreigners were not asking 
for the franchise, and now this young Republic is to be destroyed 
4363-3 



18 

by England's mighty army because Paul Kruger would not turn 
his government over to this band of adventurers, to these men 
without families and the consorts of harlots. 

NOT 'WRONGS AGAINST UITLANDERS. 

Mr. President, it was not the alleged wrongs of the Uitlanders 
that caused the war. We must look for another reason. Any 
person familiar with English history for the past century will ex- 
perience no trouble in reaching the cause. 

I find the following in Reynolds's Newspaper, London: 

1. The taxes in the Transvaal are levied on the rich and not on the poor. 
The Uitlander worker who earns from £5 to £10 a week is only taxed to the 
extent of 18s. per annum. 

2. Wages at the Kimberley mines, under Rhodes & Co. and the British Gov- 
ernment, are less by one-half than those of the Transvaal mines. 

The Johannesburg capitalists have declared in print that so soon as Britain 
has annexed the Transvaal wages will be lowered by 40 per cent. 

3. In the Transvaal Sunday labor is prohibited, and the authorities fine any 
employer who permits it. 

In Kimberley, under the British flag, the mines are kept going seven days 
a week. 

i. In the Transvaal the working day for both black and white men is eight 
hours by law. 

At Kimberley black men are worked for twelve hours a day. 

5. In Kimberley what is called the " compound " system is in force for col- 
ored men. This is slavery by another name. The Government of the Trans- 
vaal Republic will not allow the system to be introduced into the Transvaal. 

6. At the meeting of the South African Chartered Company the other day, 
Earl Grey said that our— the British— Government would support the com- 
pany in the introduction of native (black) and Asiatic (yellow) "labor " be- 
cause of its "cheapness" as compared with white or British "labor." 

The real motive for the war against the Boers is founded in 
English greed, in English cupidity, and in English dishonor. 

MB. CHAMBERLAIN'S FABRICATIONS. 

Labouchere, M. P., in his paper, the London Truth, of January 
18, 1899, says: 

The real fact, as every day is becoming more clear, is that Mr. Rhodes 
wished to reacquire power in the Cape in order to sell his chartered company 
to us with the aid and approval of the Cape Colony, and that the mine owners 
in the Transvaal wauted to convert its government into an organization to 
crimp blacks and to force them to work in the mines. Admitting that we 
had cause to complain of the treatment by the Transvaal of our citizens in 
not allowing them to make a sufficient number of blacks work for them, we 
ought to have consented to arbitration, as suggested by President Kruger. 
The only reason we did not was that any independent investigation would 
have blown to the winds the fabrications of the South African League and 
of the Transvaal mine owners which were circulated by Mr. Chamberlain in 
order to arouse the passions of Englishmen at home to war point. 

Mr. Frederic Harrison, one of the foremost men of England, has to say 
abotit this question of the franchise in the Transvaal. In an open letter to 
Lord Salisbury, the premier of Great Britain, published in the London 
Chronicle August, 1899, Mr. Harrison said: 

" Measured by the compromises with foreign nations which you may justly 
claim to have brought to a successful issue, the concessions already accepted 
by the Republic are indeed decisive. Prom nine years to seven years, from 
seven to five years, from one demand of the outlanders to another, the Boers 
have given way. They have already conceded the whole of the original de- 
mand made upon them and have even added more. And at every fresh con- 
cession Sir Alfred Milner is instructed to make further demands, until 
throughout the Transvaal, and we may well add at home, the impression 
prevails that it is not concession of claims which is sought from the Republic, 
but submission, humiliation, and loss of independence. Is this how negotia- 
tions havu been carried on, when you, my lord, as head of the foreign office 
have dealt with Russia, Turkey, France, or the United States? This is not 
negotiation. It is war, war of naked aggression, war wherein the Boers will 
not yield without a desperate struggle and after bloody combats, a war 
4.323 



19 

whicn can not be closed by a few victories nor the traces of it wiped out by 
a few promises or proclamations, a war wherein many true and patriotic 
Englishmen devoutly trust that the Boers may not be ultimately crushed." 

ANOTHER TRUTHFUL ENGLISHMAN. 

Mr. J. A. Hobson, in the London Speaker, asked "What are 
we fighting for?" And he then asserted that the mine owners in 
the Transvaal desired to overthrow the Republic so they could 
enact the same slave-labor laws inforceatKimberley; so that they 
could repeal the eight-hour law and compel the black laborers, at 
least, to work twelve hours a day; so that they could repeal the 
Sunday laws and run the mines seven days each week, as they do 
at Kimberley. Mr. Hobson says: 

The attitude of the mining industry toward the Transvaal Government in 
respect of the labor question is instructive. Witnesses before the industrial 
commission at Johannesburg were unanimous in maintaining that it was the 
duty of the Government to procure a steady and sufficient supply of Kaffirs 
for the mines. The Government was called upon to accredit and assist 
agents of the mining industry to obtain native labor, to pay premiums to 
Kaffir chiefs, to furnish extra pay to the native commissioners for the same 
object, and to convey this labor "under supervision " to the mines, erecting 
"compounds" along the road, reducing railroad fares to one- third of the ex- 
isting rate, and in a dozen other ways spending further money in serving the 
private interests of the mines. Why politics and economics are so closely 
connected that the public purse should be used to keep down the wages bill 
of the mines is not intelligible to English people. But it is perfectly clear 
that under a " reformed " government the mine owners will take every care 
to press these claims. 

The testimony of Mr. Albu before the industrial commission at Johannes- 
burg throws a great deal of light upon this feature of the case: 

" The native at the present time receives a wage which is far in excess of the 
exigencies of his existence. The native earns between 50 shillings and 60 shill- 
ings per month, and then he pays nothing for food or lodging. In fact, he can 
save nearly all that he receives. If the native can save £20 a year, it is almost 
sufficient for him to go home andlive on the fat of his land. In five or six years' 
time the native population will have saved enough money to make it unnec- 
essary for them to work any more. The consequences of this will be most 
disastrous for the industry aud the State. This question applies to any class 
of labor and in any country, whether it be in Africa, Europe, or America. I 
think if the native gets enough to save £5 a year, the sum is quite enough for 
his requirements and will prevent natives from becoming rich in a short 
space of time. 

" You say the native does not require luxuries, and if he has worked for a 
year he has saved enough to go back to his kraal and remain idle? 

"Yes. 

" Can you suggest any remedy for this? 

"The only remedy which I can suggest is that we pay the native a wage 
which, while enabling him to save money, will hinder him from becoming 
exceptionally rieh. 

" Is it in the control of the mining industry to regulate the wages of Kaffirs? 

" To a great extent— that is, if the Government assists us in bringing labor 
to this market." 

A CONSPIRACY AGAINST LABOR. 

Here, Mr. President, is the gist of the whole controversy. If 
the English Government conquer the Transvaal, they will* take 
those people, as they did at Kimberley, to assist in bringing labor 
to the market. In fact, to-day there are four English colonies 
where the contract-labor system is in force — Jamaica, British 
Guiana, Mauritius, and Trinidad. There a system of slave labor 
exists enforced by the British Government, the laborers being 
imported under contract and driven to toil by their slave masters, 
punished if they are idle, fined, and compelled to have the hours 
which they shall toil regulated by the labor contractor; and an 
English writer announces to-day that this is the proper system 
for labor in the Tropics; that no matter what country holds colo- 
nies in the Tropics, the labor system adopted by the English at 
4363 



20 

Kimberloy, in British Guiana, in Jamaica, and in Trinidad is 
the system for the best interests of the laborer and of the employer. 
Mr. Hobson says: 

If this war can be successfully accomplished and a settlement satisfactory 
to the mine owners can be reached, the first fruits of victory will be repre- 
sented in a large, cheap, submissive supply of black and white labor, attended 
by such other economies of cost as will add millions per annum to the profits 
of the mines. 

The blood and the money of the people of Great Britain are be- 
ing spent for this purpose. No other definite, tangible result of 
the conflict can be shown. The men who, owning the South Afri- 
can press and its political organizations, engineered the agitation 
which has issued in this war are the same men whose pockets will 
swell with this increase. Open-eyed and persistent, they have 
pursued their course, plunging South Africa into a temporary ruin 
in order that they may emerge victorious, a small confederacy of 
international mine owners and speculators, holding the treasures 
of South Africa in the hollow of their hands. 

Any person who will examine this disgraceful chapter of English 
history will find that the more closely it is looked into, the more 
shocking it becomes, and he will be led to marvel that the world 
looks on while the infamy is being accomplished. 

THE BLESSINGS OF ENGLISH ETJLE. 

The argument employed to silence the consciences of the small 
number of English people who are possessed of that moral faculty 
is that they propose to confer the blessings of English rule upon 
these people. 

Is English rule such a blessing? 

In India to-day 75,000,000 of enforced British subjects are starv- 
ing, and Moreton Frewen, a prominent English writer, with an 
estate in Ireland, says the chief cause of this condition was the 
closing of the India mints to silver coinage, thus destroying the 
value of the savings of these people, which were in silver orna- 
ments and bullion. We may add to this cause the vast sums taken 
annually from India by taxation to support a foreign army and a 
great foreign pension list. 

Before English occupation a native farmer could not be de- 
prived of his title to his land. No matter how deeply he might 
become involved in debt, the title to his home was sacred and 
could not be taken away. England changed the law and allowed 
the title to pass by foreclosure or by judgment for debt, and the 
result has been the same as it has been in every other place where 
similar practices exist — the usurers are acquiring vast estates, the 
independent land owners are becoming tenants and hence slaves, 
forced to take what is left of the product of their toil after their 
landlords are satisfied. These causes, all the result of English 
rule, have produced starvation in India every year, and in bad 
years, like the present, people die by millions. What is given in 
compensation for this horrid condition? The people of India have 
not adopted anything that is English. They are not Christians. 
They can not speak the language of their conquerors. In fact, 
England has never tried to Christianize them or teach them the 
English language. England's only incentive to the improvement 
of the Indian has been, how much money can our favored classes 
make out of India by exploiting the country for franchises and by 
taxation? 

Mr. MASON . I would not interrupt the Senator but for the 

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fact that he is just leaving the question as to the cause of the fam- 
ine in India; and I wish to ask him, is it not also true that one of 
the principal causes of that famine is that the cereals of India 
which the natives raise are exported and taken away to England — 
that the very food they themselves raise is taken away from them? 

MILLIONS STARVING IN INDIA. 

Mr. PETTIGREW. Oh, yes, Mr. President. I say that, added 
to the fact that silver has been demonetized in India, comes the 
shipping away of vast sums to feed the British army and an enor- 
mous civil pension list. The food supply of India to the amount 
of §150,000,000 a year is shipped away and sold for the purpose of 
paying a vast army of pensioners in England who have been en- 
gaged in the Indian service— either the civil or the military serv- 
ice. The balance of trade is in favor of India §150,000,000 each 
year, but no money goes to India to square the account. It is 
squared by the pretended philanthropic services of the English 
civil service and the English army, who are there simply to ad- 
vance the interests of English capital. 

Mr. MASON. There are more people starving in India than the 
English are losing in the South African war. 

Mr. PETTIGREW. There are fifty-odd million people in India 
to-day who are starving. In fact, 80 out of every 100 of the people 
of India never have enough to eat. Some few of the people have 
plenty of food, and 4 out of each hundred live in luxury. That 
is the effect of caste in India, and we are approaching the same 
condition of things in this country. It has been accomplished in 
India by ages of progression, but is being accomplished in this 
country by a few years of a different system. 

Mr. GALLINGER. There is plenty to eat in this country. 

Mr. PETTIGREW. The Senator from New Hampshire says he 
has plenty to eat. 

Mr. GALLINGER. Mr. President 

Mr. PETTIGRE W. I am very glad of that, but I presume there 
are people in New Hampshire who do not. as a rule, have plenty 
to eat, and there are some in all our great cities. 

Mr. GALLINGER. Mr. President, if the Senator will permit, 
I did not say what he represents me as saying. I said our people 
were getting plenty to eat. 

Mr. PETTIGREW. Well, I suppose the Senator is one of the 
people. 

Mr. GALLINGER. I think the Senator's statement is hardly 
borne out by the facts, and I trust the Senator, at least, is not in 
that category. 

SCANT WAGE FOR THE COAL MINER. 

Mr. PETTIGREW. Mr. President, the coal miner in Ohio in 
1898 received §192 for his yearly wage: and, with a family of five, 
that would leave §39 per capita to furnish a home, education, 
food, and raiment for an American citizen and his family. Last 
year the coal miner in Ohio received §241 for his yearly wage: 
which was about §48 per capita to feed, to clothe, to educate, and 
to house his family. Whether they had enough to eat or not I 
have not investigated. I presume they would have been glad to 
have had more and better food than they could buy with such a 
wage. Further than that, the wages of the Ohio coal miner were 
less last year and the year before than were the wages of miners 
in Austria. 
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22 

I have previously described Johannesburg, in the Transvaal. 

It is a typical English foreign settlement. 

There are two other English colonies to whicn I will call your 
attention — Singapore and Hongkong. The latter is a city of 222,000 
people (1891 census). The white population is 8,550, of whom 
6,408 are males and 2,085 are females. The Asiatics number 151,100 
males and 61,800 females. There are therefore 3 white males to 1 
female, and almost three colored males to each female. Even the 
Asiatics recognize the character of the settlement. 

In Singapore there are 184,500 people, 4,312 of whom are white 
males and 942 white females. There are 135,000 Asiatic males and 
40,500 Asiatic females. The white males outnumber the white 
females more than 4 to 1, and the Asiatic males outnumber the 
Asiatic females more than 3^ to 1. In both of the typical English 
colonies even the Asiatics will not live with their families because 
of the vile character of the settlements. These colonies are little 
better than brothels, and these Englishmen are there only for pur- 
poses of trade. Their golden rule is to keep all they get and get 
all they can, as the first and the last and the whole duty of man, 
and the thought of benefiting the people over whom they rule 
never enters into their calculations. 

BRITAIN'S BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION. 

The person would be simple indeed who believed these soulless 
adventurers were there to teach or practice the golden rule. Yet 
Kipling says they are there to "bear the white man's burden." 
At Singapore benevolent assimilation has done its work and has 
left impress upon the morals of the people. 

The Statesman's Year-Book says that in Singapore there are 
3,600 Eurasians. I looked to see what a Eurasian was and I found 
it was a person born of a European father and an Asiatic mother, 
and through further investigation I learned that not one in twenty 
was born in lawful wedlock. 

The English army and the English police protect property and 
trade in these colonies, and that is the only boast England can lay 
claim to wherever her infamous heel has poisoned the earth. 

England must rise or fall in her boast of power to govern others 
and confer the benefits of a Christian civilization upon them by 
the success or failure of her effort in India; by the success or fail- 
ure of her effort in Singapore; by the success or failure of her ef- 
fort in Hongkong, in Jamaica, in Trinidad, in fact, wherever she 
has planted her hag; and I defy any person to find a colony under 
English rule, not composed of Englishmen, where they have not 
been miserably cursed by her presence. 

Nothing that is good, nothing that is beneficial, nothing that is 
of advantage to those people has been conferred by England's 
presence, until to-day she is hated wherever she is. and it would 
be a blessing to mankind if she were driven from those countries. 

A FEW NOBLE ENGLISHMEN. 

Mr. President, there are many noble Englishmen — Mathew 
Arnold, John Stuart Mill, John Morley, James Bryce are exam- 
ples which would honor any land or any race; but these men 
nave no influence and exercise no force in shaping the political 
and industrial elements that control the English Government. 
The governing classes of England are governed by but one motive — 
greed— and to satisfy greed they engage in plunder. They have 
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23 

no higher aim than that which rules the highwayman. They hate 
and despise all other nations and all other races of men. If they 
bestow the flattery of friendship upon any nation or any man, it 
is to enable them to use the intended victim of their mercenary 
attentions. They scheme to reap an advantage by a pretense of 
friendship. That is the pretense they are trying to play upon 
the people of the United States to-day, and I am sorry that they 
have found a foothold with a so-called American Administration. 

Through all time, with what brutal contempt they have looked 
down upon and despised the Irish people. Just now they find it 
to their advantage to extol Irish bravery. You may travel around 
the world and make it a point to associate with the English resi- 
dents and travelers in every country, and you will find that, which 
I have found, to be the fact. 

In this connection I quote from a letter written by a graduate 
of Harvard College, who has been in almost every country upon 
the globe. He says: 

I was brought up in an atmosphere of great admiration for England— 

If he was brought up in Massachusetts, that is pretty hard on 

Massachusetts — 

and I was an ardent admirer of Great Britain, but after I have traveled 
in almost every country of Europe and Asia, and met the Briton home and 
abroad, I came to know that in Germany the British spent their time cursing 
the Germans. In France they cursed the French. In their own colonies they 
curse the natives. In Japan they loathe and despise the Japanese. In China 
no words are too strong to express the British contempt for the average 
Chinaman. In India they kick and cuff and swear at the natives of India. 
By mere contact with the British race I have got so I can scarcely speak of 
them without intense prejudice. I believe that the average Briton, unless 
you entirely sympathize with him in his prejudices, is the most prejudiced 
and meanest man in the world. He will have nothing to do with you unless 
you swing in line with his prejudices. 

He must be exceedingly gratified with the present condition of 
this country, for the Englishman writes our treaties; and when 
we amend them, they are submitted to him to ascertain whether 
or not he is willing to accept the amendment previous to our ac- 
tion. I will quote further from this letter of my friend: 

As for the boasted freedom of the English courts, from actual experience 
I think it is all humbug. The British courts are settled in injustice. I had 
rather be tried by a German or even a Russian court than by an English 
court. I saw a woman tried in an English court in one of the countries of 
Asia, and it was utterly shocking to me to see what that woman had to en- 
dure. She was charged with having given poison to her husband. I believe 
her to be innocent to-day, yet the whole community had not a single English- 
man who did not vent his British prejudice against this poor woman. 

She was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life im- 
prisonment, and there it will end. I don't believe that the British Govern- 
ment, in its most generous mood, ever mitigated a sentence beyond life 
imprisonment when it concerned a woman. I should judge that there was 
solid satisfaction in the whole of England whenever a woman was condemned 
by the court. Of course the ultimate quality of an Englishman is hypocrisy. 
Wherever he goes he criticises from his peculiarly hypocritical point of view. 
If he goes to a French colony, he has unlimited sympathy for the natives who 
are crushed by the French Government. But if he goes to an English colony, 
he loathes and despises the natives. I have read in a number of books where 
Englishmen have traveled in the colonies of foreign nations. Never once 
have I seen the slightest evidence of fair judgment toward the governing 
power. It is only the English who understand liberty, and yet they are the 
most utterly illiberal people toward others in their mode of government on ' 
the face of the earth. God help those who are under British rule! 

MERELY PROPERTY GRABBERS. 

The English Government is organized to promote the getting of 
property, no matter who produced the property, and to the pro- 
tection of that property after it has passed into English hands. 
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24 

This force moves England's navies and sends her armies into 
distant lands to murder and to rob the weaker nation of its share 
of the earth. 

The rights of man have no place in England's moral or legal 
lexicon. This is true to such an extent that even in England her 
courts punish for offenses against property ten times more severely 
than for offenses against the person. For years London Truth has 
published in parallel columns the punishments administered for 
petty thefts and trespass and for brutal assaults, in order to try 
and correct this abuse, but to no purpose, for English thought has 
been directed so long to the idea that property is sacred above all 
things and that the things man produces are more important than 
the man, that only a revolution in English sentiment can work 
the needed change; and that revolution can and will come only 
when the English Empire is dismembered and destroyed, and 
from its embers shall arise the new Englishman, believing in the 
rights of his fellow-men in place of the long-existing belief that 
no people have rights an Englishman is bound to respect. 

During the reign of Victoria England has evicted from their 
homes in Ireland 3,668,000 Irishmen, and 4,185,000 Irishmen have 
left Ireland and gone to seek homes elsewhere, while during this 
reign over 1,200,000 people have died of starvation in Ireland. 
Yet in the midst of the most acute famine experiences vast quan- 
tities of food produced in Ireland were shipped to England to ap- 
pease the appetites of English landlords, while the men, women, 
and children whose labor produced the food in Ireland died of 
starvation for the want of what their toil had earned, and the 
same thing is seen every year in India and is intensified to-day. 
Irish evictions were always made in the Queen's name. Glad- 
stone said in Parliament: " We are particeps criminis. We with 
power in our hands look on." Taxation in Ireland to-day is very 
much higher than it is in England. Moreton Frewen, who is an 
English landlord with an estate in Ireland, is my authority for 
this statement. 

A CHANCE FOR IRELAND TO STEP IN. 

Mr. President, I hope the day will come, and I hope the Trans- 
vaal war will furnish the opportunity, when Ireland will rise in 
her might and drive every English soldier into the sea and every 
English landlord from her soil. That island belongs to the people 
who till it. Confiscation of the rights of the nonresident land- 
lord would be eminently justifiable in their case. 

But how fares it with India? In the reign of the present mon- 
arch over 12,000,000 people have perished from starvation, and 
this year, the worst of all, that number is likely to be exceeded, as 
efforts for relief are almost suspended while the English nation 
spends its money and sheds the blood of its people in an effort to 
steal the Transvaal gold mines, so that her overrich may reap 
greater profit and employ slave labor to work the mines. But the 
opium trade flourishes and is profitable, for that is a government 
monopoly in India, and over the factories the English flag floats, 
and upon every package of the deadly drug is the stamp of Vic- 
toria and her coat of arms. 

During the reign of Victoria, England has been engaged in forty 
wars, and in every one she was the aggressor. These have been 
wars of conquest and of pluuder. During all this bloody and ter- 
rible reign the sun has arisen each morning to be greeted in its 
course around the world by the shrieks of "her victims and the 
4303 



25 

sound of English guns employed to murder those who resisted her 
oppression and gave up their lives in the vain effort to stay the 
course of English greed. 

POVERTY STRICKEN AND PAUPERIZED BY BRITISH POLICY. 

But the reflex influences of this half century of wrong to others 
have worked the ruin of the English race at home. One-tenth of 
her people are paupers; 66 per cent are without property and do 
not own the shelter over their heads or one foot of the earth on 
which they live. 

Her yeomanry of the last century have disappeared forever. 
The lands they tilled are in pastures and in parks. 

For the first time in history the English troops were beaten in 
and turned back by the people of central Asia, in 1897. 

Soldiers are not bred in the slums of cities; they are not re- 
cruited from the families of paupers; and if it were not for the 
contingent furnished by Ireland and Scotland and the recruits 
from the farms of Canada and Australia, the English armies in 
South Africa would long ago have been driven into the sea. The 
English soldier from England will no longer fight. Four hundred 
and fifty Boers attacked Spion Kop and killed and wounded 2,000 
and drove those who were left to their defenses. The same story, 
wherever England has met white men for years, has been told. 
Fighting naked savages has become her business, the only busi- 
ness at which she is successful; and yet this work is the white 
man's burden, which Ave are asked to help bear. 

England carries on these wars against the poorly armed people of 
Asia and Africa with the most cruel and savage barbarity. First 
the foe, often armed with old muzzle-loading rifles or spears, 
crowded together, without artillery, are mowed down by rapid- 
fire guns, and the survivors are demoralized. Then English 
mounted lancers charge the fleeing mass, overtaking individuals 
here and there and running them through the backs with their 
lances, keeping count of their victims and boasting of the num- 
ber slain. Those left upon the field who are wounded are then 
murdered in cold blood. In the Soudan, in 1898, Kitchener fired 
upon crowds of women and children and killed hundreds at Om- 
durman. 

"PIG STICKING" RELICS OS BARBARISM. 

Why is the lance longer used in modern warfare? Why are 
English horsemen armed with lances, the remotest relic of barbar- 
ism in connection with war? It is simply for the fun of what they 
called, when the war opened with the Boers, "pig-sticking." Is it 
not time that the civilized nations of the world rose and stayed 
the course of this nation which carries the black flag and is engaged 
in the murder of our fellow-men throughout the world? 

Here is a picture of the Soudan campaign of 1896, from Winston 
Churchill, in the London Post, September 29, 1898: 

We had not gone far when individual dervishes began to walk toward the 
advancing squadrons, throwing down their weapons, holding up their hands, 
and imploring mercy. The laws of war do not admit the right of a beatea 
enemy to quarter. 

The victor is not obliged to accept surrender. This is the new 
English doctrine of war. Churchill does not say what was done, 
but there is no doubt these supplicants for mercy were murdered 
on the spot. 

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26 

Mr. E. N. Bennett, in the January Contemporary Review, re- 
lated what he saw in the Soudan campaign: 

All the wounded were killed and then robbed. 

This slaughter of the wounded was not confined to Arab servants. It was 
stated that orders were given to kill the wounded. Certain it is no protest 
was made when scores of wounded were dispatched. The dervishes, who 
were stretched on the sands within a few yards, were bayonetted. Arabs, 
who lay further out in the desert from the line of march and. happened to 
move or turn over in their agony, were instantly pierced with bullets. On 
some occasions shots were fired into the bodies of wounded men at such close 
quarters that the smell of burning flesh was sickening. 

After the battle of Omdurman, Dervishes, who lay with shattered legs or 
arms, absolutely without weapons, were bayoneted and shot without mercy. 
Our own British soldiers took part in it. On the west slopes of Surgham I 
noticed a fine old Dervish, with a gray beard, who was disabled by a wound 
in his leg. About 8 yards from him was his son, a boy of 17, whose leg had 
also been lacerated by a bullet. Both were without arms, yet an Englishman 
stepped out of the ranks and drove his bayonet through the old man's chest. 
The old man begged in vain for mercy and clutched the soldier's bayonet, 
reddening his hands in his own blood in a vain attempt to prevent a second 
thrust. No effort was made by officers or men to prevent the murder, and 
the report was that General Kitchener had given orders to kill all wounded. 

MURDERED AND ROBBED THE WOUNDED. 

This is from an English correspondent, who relates what he saw 

with his own eyes: 

No attempt was made for two days to do anything for the wounded Der- 
vishes. 

Except to murder and rob them. 

General Kitchener returned from these terrible scenes with the 
blood of thousands of murdered men, women, and children on his 
hands, and urged Christian England to forget his barbarity and 
subscribe a fund to build a college at Khartoum to teach Chris- 
tianity and English civilization. I can imagine the children, 
whose fathers and mothers had been thus barbarously murdered, 
nocking in numbers to become students of a civilization and a re- 
ligion that had deprived them of their parents — and the justifica- 
tion for all this was that their purpose was to benefit and bless 
mankind. 

Hear the canting Salisbury, at a dinner of the Constitutional 
Club, London, December 16, 1898. Referring to the Soudan cam- 
paign, he said: 

The Empire is advancing and must advance. The great strength you 
have must be used unfalteringly, unsparingly, but still prudently, for the ad- 
vancement of the interests of the Empire and for the benefit of mankind. 
That we have used the force intrusted to us not violently, not sentimentally, 
but with calm and courageous calculation for the advancement of the inter- 
ests of the Empire and the benefits of the civilization of mankind. 

RUM, OPIUM, BIBLES, AND HARLOTS MAKE A CARGO. 

The cargo of an English ship starting to the Tropics on a mis- 
sion of civilization and Christian mercy is made up of an assort- 
ment of merchandise, among which maybe found rum and opium, 
with the Queen's stamp upon them. There are Bibles, English 
harlots, and the missionary to go before and open the way for the 
introduction of the rest of the cargo, until a colony is built up 
like Singapore and Hongkong. No wonder, with these experi- 
ences fresh in their minds, that the Asiatics do not embrace 
Christianity. 

Our imperialistic friends and the President favor taking tropical 
colonies and holding them, after the English model, on the plea of 
duty to mankind, and the President employs fine passages of hypo- 
critical cant borrowed from England's long experience. We are 
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27 

told we should join England in her work and help bear the white 
man's burden. We are told that now is the moment when the 
destiny of Anglo-Saxon civilization hangs in the balance, and we 
must take up the burden and spread civilization and enlignten- 
ment and Christianity, after the English fashion, over that por- 
tion of the world not yet cursed by the blight of English presence; 
that England has been doing the work for a century, and now 
she falters and finds the burden too great to bear. Jealous rivals 
covet her empire and her dominions; that the great prize at stake 
for mankind is Anglo-Saxon dominion and lordship over the 
world; that dominion after the English fashion it is our duty to 
uphold; that it is Gods work, and that He desires we should make 
England's struggle our own. And so imbued has the President 
become with this idea that he has pursued a course that has led the 
whole world to believe he has made at least a verbal alliance with 
Great Britain to render aid, if occasion requires. The effect of 
our attitude has been to prevent the nations of Europe from help- 
ing the South African republics. 

THIS IS OUR PLAIN DUTY. 

Therefore our duty is plain. We should pass this resolution of 
s3 T mpathy with these struggling Republics. We should show the 
world that England can not rely upon us for support in any form. 
We should encourage and counsel with her enemies. We should 
show to the whole world that we condemn her course in South 
Africa. 

I spurn an English alliance and English sympathy. I want 
nothing to do with that nation of robbers and murderers, unless 
it be to join the other nations of the earth in a notice to England 
that she mustclose her career of piracy, must pull down her black 
flag, and withdraw her armed forces from all her colonies and 
allow them to be free. Rather than join in this unholy work, 
called by that poet of blood "the white man's burden," let us 
emulate the example of our forefathers and be again the champions 
of all men struggling to be free, the example to the world, the 
proof to mankind that a nation of freemen can do right, can be 
just, can resist the temptation to conquer and oppress, and that 
we hate injustice. Let us exhibit the example of a government 
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all gov- 
ernments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, 
and demonstrate that this Government, so conceived and so ded- 
icated, a government of, for, and by the people, shall not perish 
from the earth. 
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